What Am I Doing With My Life

What humans see:

What Vulcans see:

too many people completely separate disability from themselves in their mind. it's something that happens to other people. other sad people i don't want to think about. are they really even people, it's too much to bear thinking about that happening to a person... those background characters over there. it would never be me, i can't cope with thinking about that possibility.

this mass denialism of the fragility of the human body (YOUR human body) has created a whole category separate from the disabled - the "elderly." since anyone can join it if they live long enough.. no they can't be disabled. that's scary, and worse it's political. so they are just "old." so what they lost their hearing, their mobility, their heart function? that's just how it goes for old people. as if that's not a person as real as you. as if you wouldn't be devastated if that happened to you today (and it can btw). as if you won't be when it's your turn to be old, and disabled.

My grandparents lived to 98 and 103. Read that again— 98 and 103. My grandmother died 5 months ago and was born in 1923.

She was extremely wealthy. My grandfather left her millions. She paid about 13,000 a month for her care.

And her nurses abused her. She could do nothing. She could not speak for herself, feed herself, clothe herself, and the humiliation they made her endure was disgusting. When she tried to express discomfort, they gave her drugs to “keep her calm” (keep their shift easy). We fought like HELL to hold that fucking place accountable. The only reason we were aware is because we hired a private nurse on her behalf, too.

The elderly are a massive, extremely vulnerable, and disabled group. You cannot leave them out of your advocacy, you cannot leave them out of the conversation. “They’re loud, they smell, they’re opinionated, they’re rude, they make me uncomfortable”. I don’t care. I don’t care! They need your advocacy too! I want you to think, if my grandmother— who was in the best retirement home she could afford, with a personally hired third-party nurse to step in where the other carers failed, had such abhorrent care… what about everyone else? What about all the elderly who don’t have a support system?

収穫祭

2015年、長屋門公園。

And so much love to that poster, because it stuck with me, and really made me think about why I find Kel so compelling. And, in thinking about it, I've come to understand that the truth is that Kel doesn't get chosen. She chooses herself.

When Kel touches the door at the beginning of Squire, Neal tells her never to do it again, because the Chamber might kill her. And Kel proceeds to touch that fucking door every fucking year, to the point that the Chamber knows her, and remembers her, and is like, "Girl, you again??" And she's like, "Yep, it's me! Please torture me some more." She keeps coming back because she is afraid that she won't pass the Ordeal, and she keeps touching the door because when Kel can't do something, she works at it until she can. And so, she builds a relationship with the Chamber the way she does with everyone else in her story: by showing up, by being reliable, by having integrity, and by being the best version of herself she can be, every day.

I tend to believe that the purpose of the Ordeal is that the Chamber forces you to change--to realize something about yourself that needs to be faced so that you can become a better person--and that the Ordeal only ends once you've internalized that change. (This is why Joren dies).

Kel's Ordeal ends when she changes the way she thinks about the Chamber: "I thought you would be grand and terrible" she says "I thought you would make us grow up... This is just mean." She had put her faith in the Chamber to show her that she was worthy, but she was worthy from the start. This is what changes about her: she no longer seeks external validation from the Chamber; she no longer has anything to prove. She realizes was always worthy.

And the Chamber doesn't go on and on about how she's special, or the chosen one, or whatever. It just says: "You'll do."

When Blayce starts defying the laws of life and death, there is only one class of knights that the Chamber has access to, and Kel is the last candidate to enter the Chamber that year. She is the Chamber's last chance to enact any sort of will on the world outside its little room. And Kel walks in, and it knows her. She is the one who has been testing herself against it for years, and she comes back and gives it the metaphorical finger and tells it to fuck off. The entity in the Chamber is already searching for someone to do this important thing, but Kel doesn't need some elemental demi-god who exists outside of time to approve of her. She does that for herself. She chooses herself.

The Chamber didn't pick her in advance; it wasn't some mystical prophecy. It was holding a job interview, and Kel showed up and said, "It's me. I'll do it. (Also, go fuck yourself.)"

And the Chamber says: "Yeah, all right. (Thank fuck you showed up)."

What I love about Kel is that she embodies the kind of heroism that is possible for all of us. She is dedicated. She is kind. She is hard-working. She commits herself to the service of others. None of those things are superhuman. They are possible for each of us to achieve.

At the end of the day, being a hero isn't about being blessed or prophesized or having super-powers. It's about showing up every day and saying: